Do not leave the fronts of houses to the whim of each builder: let the authorities fix their line, height and design so that a street or square is composed as a whole, and vary the designs from one street to the next so that uniformity does not become tedium.
Plant the boulevards; open squares in every quarter
Line the great streets with rows of trees and wide pavements, and give every quarter a planted square within a few minutes’ walk.
With the engineer Adolphe Alphand, Haussmann planted tens of thousands of trees along the new boulevards and avenues, usually plane and chestnut in single or double rows, and laid out the Bois de Boulogne and Vincennes, new parks such as the Buttes-Chaumont and Montsouris, and a network of small public squares on the London model. Alphand recorded the work, down to the design of benches, railings and kiosks, in Les Promenades de Paris (1867–73).
Related rules
Cut new straight streets through the old city to join its railway stations to one another and to its centre, and end each one on a monument (a station, a church, an opera house) so that it has an object as well as a use.
Tie the height of every house front to the width of its street: on streets 20 m wide or more the cornice may stand at 20 m, on narrower streets lower; above the cornice the roof must stay inside a line rising at 45°.
street ≥ 20 m → cornice ≤ 20 m; street < 20 m → cornice ≤ c. 17.5 m (older rule); roof inside 45°
Build every house on a new street to the same alignment, in dressed stone, with its floors, balconies and cornice at the levels of its neighbours, and keep the fronts clean, so that the street reads as a single wall.
Where many avenues meet, make a round place with a monument at its centre, bring the avenues to it at equal angles, and wall the place with uniform buildings between them.
Keep the whole shore of the lake as public park, with lagoons, beaches and harbours, and set the city’s museums and libraries along it as its cultural forecourt.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Plant the boulevards; open squares in every quarter”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/haussmann-planted-boulevards. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.